


Through a Crack in the Door

by emery_and_lead



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Allusions to Violence, Closeted Character, Earth-1796, M/M, Mentions of death in war, Mother-Son Relationship, Off-Screen Child Abuse, One-Sided Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Second Person, Steve POV, Vague references to sexual situations, outside pov, suicide ideation, third person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-01-27 21:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1722467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emery_and_lead/pseuds/emery_and_lead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: 5 People Who Found Out + 1 Person Steve Told</p><p> <br/><i>No one had to tell you. It’s right there, and in a certain light, it’s obvious.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is totally 1796 compliant (as of the day I finished writing it), but it does require the assumption that there is some time elapsing between letters. The classic 5+1, with outside POV because I love it. Second person because shameless voyeurism is more fun that way.
> 
> Beta read by my sister, who is lovely. (Answers to some clarifying questions she asked can be found in the endnotes.)
> 
> That suicide ideation tag is serious (though it is not by Steve or Tony). There is a situation where someone literally needs to be talked down, so if that is something that triggers you, please use discretion. 
> 
> Everything the light touches is my kingdom. Just kidding, it’s Marvel’s (and Tea's, and Rain's). I live in the Shadow Lands.

1.

You know the way he looks at James when he thinks no one can see him, and you could blame the pain in your chest on the consumption, but denial never did the dying any good. Your beautiful boy, and he is going to be wrecked because he cares too much about the wrong people, because a heart that big can’t hold its own weight. You watch him through the window, kicking cans in the street at Bucky’s heels, jostling him with his elbows like he thinks he can move all that muscle, and James pins him up against a shopfront in retaliation.

He is so strong he sometimes forgets his body wasn’t built to hold what’s inside it. You remember staying up nights, singing soft lullabies your grandmother taught you while he wheezed in the bed, your brave, beautiful boy, trying so hard not to cry: betrayed by his own breath when each gasp came like a sob and forced the tears out.

Afterwards, you would press your fingertips to his sweaty forehead and tell him his heart is in the place his breath was meant to go. You’d tell him how he was born unbreathing, but the hand of God Himself reached down within his chest, reached down and pumped his heart to life: a little miracle on the kitchen floor because a heart that big, God wouldn’t let die.

Bucky will look after him, but not forever, not when his wife and his children and his country call his name. Out the window, they wrestle in the street, kicking up dust, knocking knees, and Bucky lets Steve pin him down in the dirt. Your boy pumps his fist in the air, lets loose a victory shout you can’t hear through the window, and Bucky grins up at him, cheek still pressed into the dirt, because Bucky loves him. He throws his arm around Steve’s shoulders when Steve lets him up, bends his head so their ears are level; he loves your boy but not in the way he needs.

Steve’s love for Bucky is as old as the scar at the corner of his mouth, a scar he got from another boy’s fist: that first boy Bucky laid flat for him. You remember Steve hitched a ride home on Bucky’s back, concussed and half-delirious and _smiling_.

You don’t know if he really understands his own heart, the way it’s so open. His love has no eyes and no hands; it lies blind at the purest part of him, closest to God, and they would have it cut from his chest. It’s not fair, because your boy is beautiful and this is the best part of him; this is what the water gave him when it unveiled his soul beneath the Priest’s hand, that hand through which God moves.

Now you are the one wheezing in the bed like a broken thing, coughing up blood. Steve presses his fingertips to your sweaty forehead, leaning in to kiss your cheek, and James smiles at you from the doorway. It’s not sad like the doctor’s smile, a smile for the dying; it’s wide and sweet and wicked all at once. You know why Steve loves this boy, and you know that he can’t have him, and it hurts.

There’s a check on the bedside table and it breaks your heart when you think of long years and late nights at the hospital, Steve laid up in the bed with pneumonia when he was twelve and all your wages went right back to the hospital for his medicine. Bucky brought him sweets Steve never knew he stole from the corner shop, and you stood tall in the bread line beside all the men. You worked nights at the hospital even when you were so tired your hands shook; you let the world wear away at your hands and your heart so your boy wouldn’t have to, but all that money’s locked up in the bank and here he is, bringing home money on the dole. You know he stood in line for hours, stood straight and proud though his head only reached the shoulders of the other men.

He’ll buy food with that check, stale bread and maybe the head of a pig; he’ll give it all to you, swear up and down he’s already eaten even though you’ll know he hasn’t, and it will taste like pride, like regret.

Your grandmother always told you it would come full circle, but you hadn’t thought it would happen like this.

You blink, and when your eyes open you realize you must have slept for hours without noticing, because Bucky is long gone now and the light is slanting in the window. Your boy is wiping your face with a wet rag.

You have always told him that a mother’s love is limitless, that your love is like Ruth from the Old Testament; _whither thou goest, I will go._ It will follow him always, there even when he’s lost, when he feels most alone.

My love for you, you say now, is the closest I have ever come to God. You take his hand as it passes over your brow and you watch his face: your brave, beautiful boy, trying so hard not to cry.

You know the way he looks at James when he thinks no one can see him, his heart so big it shines through his eyes. You pray that heart may carry him through.

 

2.

You’re not sure how no one else can see it. He’s a big guy, shoulders ten miles wide and strong, square hands: a soldier’s hands, quick and loud as he punches the keys, his nails clipped neat. So yeah, maybe you do get it, a little bit, because he looks so strong, with that jaw and his chest, and he seems so put-together. But the way those barreled shoulders hunch, he could be all of five foot four, brandishing a trash can lid on the cover of that first comic your grandmother bought for ten cents back in the fifties.

Yesterday morning, you found Jess and Graham talking about him—by the _water cooler_ , because you’re apparently living in a daytime TV show—and they didn’t even bother to pull out some of the little paper cups from the wall dispenser and pretend they had a legitimate excuse to be standing there in the corner. They were whispering, sort of; it was more a half-hearted _soto_ voice than any real whisper, loud enough you could hear it ten feet away, even with a flimsy cubicle wall between you and the cooler.

You made the mistake of asking why the hell they care anyway.

 _Cora,_ Jess had said, in that whisper-that’s-not-a-whisper, He’s _Captain America_.

Right. Because you didn’t know.

You’ve been watching him surreptitiously, and you see it even if no one else does: the way his face is always lined and drawn and unhappy, the way he tries to hide behind the bulk of his own massive shoulders. 

You understand him. This job is a way station for you, a leg up to something better, because you’re not going to be an intern forever. But you think, for him, it’s like a stop off the A Train when you’re trying to get to Union Square. It’s a station he came to while riding in the completely wrong direction.

You’ve talked to him a couple times before, mostly to help him out, because he’s not bad at his job, really, but he’s not very good at it, either. And it sucks, because he tries, and tries, and—you get that, too. You understand what it’s like to try and try and still fail, every time, again and again, until you’re running on fumes and lines of botched code and desperation.

He’s always by himself, looking sort of sad, so you talk to him when you’re free, when no one’s making you do their work for them or sending you out to run pointless errands like some kind of bellboy. The people who work here aren’t really bad guys, but they’re assholes to the interns, and you feel like a wet-behind-the-ears pledge in a fraternity of computer geeks.

So you’re going into the office at ass o’clock at night for no real reason besides your own suffering, and that’s when you hear it.

“I want you to think of me sprawled on your desk every time you log into your work station.” 

The cubicle partitions are short and thin and don’t all touch in the corners like they’re supposed to, but it seems purposeful and it’s kind of nice: opens up the whole floor. They aren’t designed to give anyone privacy. And Steve Rogers’ office is made of glass, so you can see the two men—standing close together, pressed up against the desk—when you look through the cracks between the maze of partitions, and on through the clear pane of Steve’s office wall. His door is ajar, just an inch or two of space between the door and the frame, but the acoustics in here have always been weird and you can hear it as though they’re standing only inches away.

Through Steve’s office wall, you see Tony Stark wrapping a necktie over Steve’s eyes. Steve is swearing, and saying things you never thought you’d hear out of his shy-smiling mouth, but you should have known. It’s always the quiet ones. And that may be a cliché, but all clichés start somewhere. You’ve heard he was loud and belligerent and determined when he was young, facing down bullies twice his size, punching hundreds of Nazis into the dirt, but Graphic Design isn’t a warzone. There’s no one here for him to fight.

And now Tony Stark is on his knees on the floor in front of Steve and Steve’s head is tipping back and Tony’s hands are at his belt, tugging, and you’re gone, out the door, goodbye. Because you can handle the shock of seeing Steve and your boss’ boss’ boss in a lip lock so passionate it looks like they’re trying to touch each other’s souls with their tongues, but after that one disastrous foray into straight porn—back before you realized you’d rather shove your face between someone’s boobs—you definitely can’t handle all this dick, even if it does belong to your grandmother’s childhood hero. 

You feel a little happy, for Steve, because you like Steve, his shy eyes and the way he wears his heart on his sleeve. But you’re also kind of gutted and a little bit mad, because when your mother kicked you out she told you Captain America wouldn’t approve of your lifestyle choices, and forget rain on your wedding day: this, _this_ , is true irony. But at least you’re not still locked in the closet in self-imposed exile like some kind of leper.

Maybe there’s something more to Steve’s sad, hunched shoulders than you believed.

Bethany said he was gay that first time she saw him on TV, paused in the middle of flicking through channels with the remote in her hand and your feet in her lap: said that no straight guy parts his hair that straight, but you didn’t believe her. You said well, yeah, but he’s from the 40s, he doesn’t know these things. Looks like you owe her her choice of sexual favor for a week, but you’re not too torn up about it. You think of her warm, soft-skinned thighs parting beneath your hands. No. It’s no hardship at all.

 

3.

You don’t know why everyone’s always shitting all over the Avengers, because there is no way in hell you and your boys are down for fighting enormous robotic fucked-if-you-know-whats on a daily basis. No. You’re calling bullshit. It’s hard enough just to keep the perimeter locked down.

There’s dust in the air, and you’re choking on it, because this bigass building just went completely to ground, crumbled away into a pile of cement and broken glass. There’s no civilians around, so it’s just you, and you’re not hurt much, although your head is bleeding sluggishly and some of it’s dripping into your mouth: but that’s just how your day is going.

So you’re thinking about potpie, because massive property damage and brushes with death remind you you’re alive, and remembering you’re alive makes you realize you’re hungry as hell and you probably have been for hours without realizing.

So of course that’s when Iron Man crash-lands on the pavement not fifty feet away from you, leaving a spider web pattern of cracks branching out beneath him. Because that’s just how this day is going.

And then Captain America rounds the corner looking like someone pissed in his corn flakes while punting his puppy for a field goal, and that just cements it. You are going to pull a muscle or burn your potpie or lose an eye, because, all together now: it’s just that kind of day.

Cap proceeds to feel Iron Man up—of _course_ he does—and… swear at him. _Captain America_. What the fuck.

“That was a really fucking risky move back there. Oh, hell: your head. Are you—here, are you okay? You’re bleeding. Let me just…” And Iron Man’s got his helmet off, holding it against his stomach while Captain fucking America _runs his fingers through Iron Man’s hair._

And then you get it. Yeah. Because Monroe’s partner’s got a girl now and he won’t shut up about her, and he looks at her just like that, like he’s seeing one of those meteor showers that only happen once every five thousand years, and all the fucking sparkly lights are reflected in his eyes. You’re not a fucking romantic, you’re not really that into feelings and shit, but you’re not blind. Or stupid.

Anyone would know that look. You envy the hell out of these assholes, but they keep your boys away from giant killer robot aliens so maybe they deserve some sparkly fucking hearts in their eyes. You hope someday that’ll be you.

You just need to find the right potpie first.

 

4.

They stumble into your alley like a couple of drunks, and the way they grapple and pull at each other’s clothes, you think for a moment they might be in the middle of a sloppy, drunken fist fight. The bigger one shoves the other man up against the wall behind the dumpster, boxing him in with his body, but he doesn’t start pounding his face in with his fists. That’s when you realize, and in the next second their features blend together into shadow.

Then the big man steps back a little and the streetlights catch their faces, and you _know_ them.

Not personally. But Tony Stark you’ve seen on posters and billboards and even a street corner once, cell phone pressed to the side of his face. You’d recognize him anywhere, for the goatee if nothing else. It’s the other man who catches your attention.

You’ve seen his face on the front covers of newspapers, and on the glossy magazines that burn strange colors if they burn at all when you light them in the bottom of your trashcan. He has the face of a boy who’s gone to war. He doesn’t look like Marcus because his shoulders are wide and his nose is long and straight and even his hair is the wrong color, yet all you see when you look at him is your baby brother.

You think maybe you ought to be angry or sad or bitter, but instead you feel vindicated. They wouldn’t put the flag on Marcus’ casket when they carried him home in a box, because before he took a bullet they found him fooling around with a boy in his unit. But the man at the mouth of the alley: that’s Captain America. Captain America, _the_ soldier, the man from the comic books and the history books and the old film reels they used to show on the projector during the junior high Veterans’ Day assembly.

That’s Captain America, and that’s a _boy_ he has pressed up against the dirty brick wall of the dark-windowed record store, one hand in his hair and the other on his hip. And Captain America is the man—the legend—that all the best soldiers strive to be: the one to throw himself down on top of a grenade, if the stories are true.

It’s been a long time, since Marcus, but it still hangs over you. He came home in that box and they told you not to look inside but you did, you did, and you’re still not sure whether or not you regret it. The gun went off at such close range it destroyed most of his torso, the cavern of his chest cavity exposed, and it was ugly and sad and despicable. And he didn’t even get a goddamn flag for his coffin.

The first panic attack came three days after they lowered him into the ground. You lost your job two and a half weeks later.

It’s been years—over a decade—and you know you’ll probably die young in this dirty back alley or any of a million others like it, but you figure that’s only fair.

You might even die the only person to see Captain America and Tony Stark kissing like thieves in a back alley. They’re backed by enough light that you can see their jaws working; the way the muscles in the Captain’s back ripple under the tight cotton of his shirt; the way Stark arches up to press their chests together.

The calloused hand that was on the side of Captain America’s neck is migrating down his shoulder blade, down his spine and further still, but the Captain’s hand closes loosely around his wrist and tugs it away before it can get anywhere.

“Tony. Not… not here.”

You can just barely hear Tony Stark’s huff of breath from where you’re sitting in the shadows, but they stand tangled together a moment longer before moving out of the dark behind the dumpster and back into the street. Captain America’s hand still cups Tony Stark’s wrist, until he seems to realize what he’s doing and lets go.

That’s Captain America. And Captain America himself may keep it hidden like a sin, tucked away in the dark behind a dumpster, but you know the truth. Because Marcus fooled around with a boy, too, and Marcus threw himself in between a bullet and that boy, and he bled out on the ground and came home in a box with no flag: but that boy he jumped in front of came home to kiss his mother hello.

 

5.

They’re never caught in any compromising positions. There is no tellingly excessive touching, no longing looks across crowded rooms or prolonged, intense eye contact from close quarters. But the way they stand, the way they move, the way their bodies turn in and open up when one comes over to stand beside the other: they are attuned to each other’s existence, instinctively aware of placement and distance and how to shift until they’re aligned.

You first saw it at Comic-Con, ages ago, before you think they even noticed it themselves. It’s the one trip you allow yourself that isn’t for work—and you’re not working, because you write about the status of the stock market and corporate espionage scandals and dirty back-door dealings, not men dressed up in tights and tin cans. But you’re a fan, so you come every year, and it’s not for work, and you like that.

Up there on the stage, behind the microphones, they kept smiling at each other, their eyes just this side of too bright. And even in their oblivion, their bodies adjusted, blink-and-you-miss-it quick, as though caught inevitably by some invisible gravity.

They’re out on the sidewalk now, signing autographs like they sometimes do—because they’re bored or relaxed or feeling chatty, you don’t really know—and you’re struck anew by the fact that _no one notices_. Because the lines and angles that connect people to one another stand out in your mind like computer code must for Tony Stark, a map of interwoven strings that leads toward understanding.

Stark keeps bracing the scraps of paper and posters and this one pair of ridiculously tiny ladies’ underwear on Rogers’ back while he scribbles his signature in outrageous loopy writing you’re certain was strategically designed to be as obnoxious as possible.

“Cap here holds the Avengers record for most pancakes eaten in one sitting, but that’s just ‘cause Thor picked the waffles instead.” It’s weird, the ripple effect of laughter through a crowd, and you have to strain to hear as he adds, “Seriously. For breakfast, Steve eats ten times his own weight, easy.”

He claps a hand on Rogers’ shoulder, and it would be a friendly gesture—it _is,_ really—but it lasts a beat too long, Stark’s palm open over the plane of his back, and Rogers leans into it minutely, like he can’t help it. He grins widely in return. “You calling me fat, Shellhead?”

“Awwww, Steve! You’re not fat: just hefty.” Stark elbows him softly, probably aiming for his ribs, but the jab lands somewhere below them.

“ _Thanks_.” Rogers’ tone is sarcastic, but he smiles as he says it, that same half-stunned smile from Comic-Con, as though not entirely sure why a hand on his shoulder and Stark’s smirking face tug at him in the inexorable way they do.

It’s cute, you decide. They’re cute. You think they’re also probably more than that: they’re tied so tight together, the pull between them strong enough to bend and shape the world around them, and that’s less an exaggeration than you’d like it to be. They’re not just cute; they’re _necessary_. You don’t believe in fate, but you do believe in time and circumstance, and that people can wear away at each other—build upon each other—slowly, like water shaping stone.

It’s something you can’t help thinking about every time you open your creaky front door to the dark silence in your apartment, the thump of your high heels against the wall the only sound. If sometimes you think about what it would be like if they kissed, and you’re lying in your bed in the dark in your underwear when you do: well, you already said you were a fan.

This would be the story of the century. But you’re not that kind of reporter.

 

+1.

Steve really wants to know why all the buildings in New York City have to be so damn tall. The roof is so high up the figure at the top looks like a dot against the sky and he knows, bone-deep, that even the super serum won’t get him up there in time if whoever’s standing there decides to jump.

He sprints anyway.

Steve isn’t as naïve as most people think. His heart may be pounding in his chest, his breathing harsh and strained and _wrecked_ , but it’s not because this is some shocking new horror. He still remembers finding that boy from the 107th sitting in his empty barracks with a gun in his mouth and a sad, desperate light in his eyes. He knows not all of the boys who tried to eat a bullet were stopped in time.

He gets to the top of the stairs, and if his heart was beating fast before, now it feels like it’s been ripped out of his chest, like he’s been hollowed out. Because the kid standing on the edge, toes poised over open air, can’t be more than twelve years old.

He tries to telegraph his movements, makes sure to step heavy enough to be heard, but not so heavy his footsteps startle the boy into freefall. He’s fifteen feet away; ten; nine; eight, when the boy speaks sharply, without turning around. “Don’t.”

He’s trying to sound authoritative, but there’s a frantic thread thrumming underneath it; Steve can tell, because he recognizes that same quavering bravado coming out of his mouth when he was twelve and trying hard to be strong through the fear. He prayed for strength then, and he runs the same prayers now on repeat through his head, desperately. “Okay. Do you wanna tell me your name?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Steve says, again, and he hopes the wild humming of his pulse doesn’t show through. It’s quiet for a moment as the boy stands there on the edge and Steve stands eight feet away, blood thundering through his ears and distant sirens wailing.

“Noah.” It’s sudden and unexpected, and if not for the serum Steve wouldn’t have heard it, because the boy’s still facing out over the city.

“Hi, Noah,” he says evenly. “I’m Steve.”

“Yeah,” Noah says, and nods at the horizon line. “I know. You’re Captain America. Did you come here to tell me I’m being stupid? That I’m just looking for attention? Because I’d do it, you know. I want to.”

Steve sucks in a breath, and it feels almost like he has asthma again, his chest knotted tight and his throat aching like somebody punched it. “I don’t think you’re being stupid, Noah.” He’s careful to keep his voice gentle, even though it feels like he has to choke the words out. “I just think something scared you, or hurt you, but I don’t know what it was.

“I… it’s stupid. It doesn’t matter.”

“Do you want to come down and talk about it?”

Noah’s hands close into fists at his sides. “No! No, I’m not coming down. I’m not.”

“Okay,” Steve says, and he can see Noah’s shoulders relax with an outrush of relieved breath. “That’s alright. You can sit down though, right? If we’re gonna talk about this, you might be more comfortable like that.”

“I… yeah. I guess.”

He drops down to crouch on the balls of his feet, and Steve can feel his heart stop in his chest before the boy settles on the ground, arms around his knees.

“So, I. I have this friend, Andrew.”

He stops talking and curls in on himself a little tighter, nose tucked between his knees. Steve doesn’t speak because he doesn’t want to push, because pushing is the last thing he even wants to think about right now.

“We were just. Goofing, you know, like pushing each other and wrestling and stuff. It’s what we always do. And then it just… I dunno what happened.

“I didn’t even mean to! I wasn’t even thinking about it! And it wasn’t, he didn’t—“ He trails off and blows out a loud, half-sobbed breath.

They sit in silence once again, the sirens louder now, closer, and Steve thinks he sees a dark figure stationed behind the door to the rooftop, backing him up.

“I kissed him,” Noah finally chokes out, shoulders shaking a little, and he’s not crying but he might be close. “I kissed him, and I _liked_ it.”

Steve swallows through the aching in his throat. “Noah. Hey. That’s… there’s nothing wrong with that, Noah.”

And then the boy turns his head, finally, and Steve nearly flinches back when he sees the dark bruising around his eye, the little cut in the corner encrusted with still-drying blood. He feels sick to his stomach, a deep nauseous rolling, because that doesn’t look like something a skinny twelve-year-old kid could do.

“That’s not what my mom said.”

And now Steve’s whole body hurts with the effort of holding still, keeping the anger from rising up and exploding out in a frantic whirl of motion. Because Noah is sort of skinny, not like Steve was, but his elbows are bony around his knees and his face is still soft at the edges.

He’s just a baby. The ache in Steve’s throat now is the pain of bottled up pressure because he wants to _scream_.

Bruises and split skin: that’s not what a mother’s love is meant to look like. Steve’s mother always told him it was her job to guard his heart, to hold it in her hand and shelter it. He remembers the walkup they lived in until he was seven, where drunk men and sick children left vomit on the stairs and the only piece of art they had was carved into a slab of wood by Steve’s great grandfather, the Fourth Station of the Cross: the Blessed Mother kneeling in the dirt with both hands pressed against Jesus’ chest, as though to take his weight as he carried the cross on his back. Steve’s mother would point to that carving and say, This is what it means to be a mother.

The other man on the roof is far enough away that he can’t hear anything they’re saying. “You—” Steve says, and stops to swallow hard.

He thinks of his mother, her hand on his cheek, and he thinks of Tony, his smile and his eyes. He thinks of how this is all wrong, Noah on this ledge and his mother sitting careless in a house somewhere: how if this boy jumps, no one will ever smile at him the way Tony smiles at Steve.

“You want to know a secret?”

Noah shrugs one shoulder like he doesn’t really care, but he whispers, “Yeah.”

Gaze fixed on Noah’s black eye, Steve takes a deep breath, and speaks. “That’s me, too. I like men, I like kissing men. That’s an okay thing to like, Noah, and your mother was wrong to tell you any different _._ ”

Sarah Rogers used to sit in the bed beside him, the Holy Bible on her knees when Steve couldn’t sleep for the asthma; she would read aloud from Ruth, his head on her shoulder, and tell him this was her love swearing its unshakable truth.

 _Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go._ _Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried._

Where is Noah’s mother as he stands there, so close to the edge? Where will she be if he throws himself into the wind?

Steve wishes he believed the hand of God would reach out for Noah as he fell, but he learned a long time ago God works best through people. So Steve will be there, hurtling down after him, wrapping himself around the boy and putting his body between Noah and the asphalt. Steve can follow him where Noah’s mother would not.

Where Steve failed to go the only other time it truly mattered.

“Your mother is the only one who’s wrong. And you gotta believe me too, ‘cause I’m Captain America, and Captain America doesn’t lie. There is _nothing_ wrong with you.”

Steve remembers what his mother used to tell him, whispered into his hair, clear despite the loud sound of his breath coming too short, too fast. He repeats it to Noah now.

“Maybe we just have a little too much heart.”

Noah turns until he’s facing Steve head on. He studies Steve for a moment, uncertain, and his voice is barely more than a whisper when he asks, “You’re really not lying?”

“I _promise_ I’m not.”

And then Noah’s pushing to his feet and sprinting at Steve, throwing his arms around Steve’s shoulders and clinging like he’s drowning. Steve stands steady, hand gentle on the back of Noah’s head: and if he feels the boy’s face rub wet against his neck, he doesn’t say anything, just closes his eyes to focus on the steady thrum of Noah’s heart beating strong against his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> None of these narrators are reliable, and their views do not accurately reflect my own.
> 
> If anyone's curious about Steve and Sarah's religious beliefs: for the purposes of this fic, Steve and his mother are ostensibly Irish Catholic (due to statistics amongst New York’s Irish immigrants at the time, and based on Steve's characterization), though they’ve transitioned away from tradition and into a more self-styled belief system (especially true for Steve in the 21st Century).
> 
> Oh, there are cubicles as well as real offices in the graphic design department because the cubicles are set up on the main floor for the interns (because it’s SI, the internship program is undoubtedly massive), while the offices are for actual staff.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is just a short deleted scene that I cut from the original, because it's a little Tony-heavy and therefore didn't really fit with the premise, and also because I had other scenes I wanted to include more. It's kind of a companion, I guess, but I thought it worked best as a little bonus chapter.

You don’t think anything Tony Stark does can surprise you anymore. And you’re _not_ surprised. Tony Stark once came to a board meeting roaring drunk with lipstick stains on his collar and the skin beneath it, then proceeded to conduct the entire meeting in a series of exaggerated innuendos masquerading as arguments against the board’s pessimism in their quarterly stock projections.

The stock dropped ten points, just like you predicted. You remember Bradley said it would be twenty, but you’re pretty sure that was only a failed attempt to scare Stark into sobriety, or reality, or both.

So no. The news that he’s shacking up with America’s golden boy does not surprise you—could not surprise you—because nothing really could.

You find the letter by accident. You were just shuffling papers around, looking for something he was supposed to sign for you yesterday—it’s nothing you haven’t done before—and only an idiot would leave it sitting loose on his desk.

Stark spends most of his time back at the LA offices now, so you see him more than you’d really like. You honestly prefer Potts, and it’s not even because she’s a nice pair of legs, even if Bradley won’t shut up about them: you know how people perceive older white businessmen, and you enjoy statistics but you prefer not to be one yourself. So no, it’s not the legs—or the hips, or the breasts, or the mouth—although the legs are nice. Ms. Potts is just so refreshingly practical.

Because Stark is completely insane.

Some examples—just, oh, off the top of your head:

Koi for the pond

[Tibetan Music for Relaxation](http://open.spotify.com/album/5e8MizVdPkcoMW5p3O5WMr)

[Ultimate Guitar Music For Massage](http://open.spotify.com/album/4W1bWTpel1Bo49VkiRmuOt)

[Chakra-Balancing Music](http://open.spotify.com/album/67WupSDUnM3BXK1AdiILa3)

[Relaxation Medley For Concentration](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ)

_Remodeling a room for Valentine's Day._

Completely, incontrovertibly insane. Your wife is lucky if she gets more than a box of chocolates, a big ridiculous prearranged order of red roses, and whatever gaudy bit of jewelry you pay someone else to buy. And it’s not because you don’t want to spend time with her—not exclusively so. You just don’t have the time.

It’s not like you’re going to tell anyone, now that you know. God, no. A secret homosexual relationship with Captain America, national hero, heart of the nation? Think of the stock drop if that blew wide open. But _you_ know.

And then suddenly you start noticing things when the Avengers come up on the screen of your TV, over breakfast or after your wife leaves for whatever it is she does in the evenings—just little things, imperceptible to anyone not actively searching them out, cataloguing each twitch of a lip, each aborted extension of a hand toward someone else’s wrist.

Tony Stark is always touching people. You had no reason to suspect, but now that you’re looking for it, you see the differences, the way he’s more careful—more purposeful—and hesitant. He never hesitates before touching anyone else he feels like putting his hands on.

Sure, it’s a little odd, a little surreal, and you don’t understand it. But it’s Tony Stark, so you’re not surprised.


End file.
